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Canada got the last hurrah at the Celebration of Light Saturday evening, closing the three-night event with a winning display. Canada was declared the winner of the event, with Brazil and China finishing second and third, respectively.

Michael Bublé became a passionate dog person after meeting his wife, dog-loving Argentine model/actress Luisana Lopilato. The couple used to drive the streets of Buenos Aires — where stray dogs abound — and Lopilato would invariably make Bublé stop the car to help a distressed canine.

A coming of age story, if you will. It was 1979, in an imposing boardroom in the old Pacific Press building on south Granville. Seated around the table, which was ominously shaped like a giant coffin, were 13 other junior reporters, all of us just a few days into our summer internships at The Vancouver Sun.

Carnival in Rio de Janeiro is world-renowned as the biggest party on Earth, making Mardi Gras in New Orleans look like a kid's birthday party. While almost four million people are expected to visit Brazil during the soccer World Cup now underway, more than six million tourists criss-crossed the country during each of the last two Carnival celebrations, according to Brazil’s Ministry of Tourism.

With the weekend news came a fascinating double standard playing out on the streets of Metro Vancouver. On one hand, we had reports of local police officers issuing record numbers of tickets to jaywalkers, along with stern warnings about how foolhardy it is to dart across a street without the aid of a crosswalk or a traffic light, and about how law enforcement is all about protecting us not just from the bad guys, but from our own bad choices.

The Pemberton Music Festival’s promoters unveiled their lineup of acts Wednesday, firming up the ground for what could be a battle of the summer music festivals — with the Squamish Valley Music Festival — on the Sea to Sky corridor. Both have come out with high-powered acts — groups such as Nine Inch Nails, Outkast, Deadmau5 and Soundgarden will headline Pemberton — and each will be counting on attracting fans willing to pay big ticket prices for the weekend-long events separated by just 18 days and 91 kilometres.

LOS ANGLES — The late Tupac Shakur rose again Sunday night at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival — brought to life by James Cameron’s visual production house, Digital Domain, and two hologram-imaging companies, AV Concepts and the U.K.-based Musion Systems. The image joined headliners Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre for two songs.

VICTORIA — When Ombudsman Jay Chalke was handed the job of investigating those botched firings in the health ministry this week, he offered multiple assurances to the public that his office would do its best to get to the bottom of the murky affair. “I am committed to a diligent and professional investigation into this matter,” he vowed in a statement issued by his office after a legislature committee referred the matter to him.